In the psychiatric report written at the time, which Didion shared, an evaluation revealed “her fundamentally pessimistic, fatalistic, and depressive view of the world around her. . . . In her view she lives in a world of people moved by strange, conflicted, poorly comprehended, and, above all, devious motivations which commit them inevitably to conflict and failure.” This would describe, more or less, the current view of most Americans I know. Though I would add: an overwhelming sense of shame. If it is true that an inability to deal with the future is a sign of mental disturbance, I don’t
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